This chapter is from the book

This chapter is from the book

In the Introduction, we talked about the four different IBM WebSphere sMash offerings. For the purposes of this book, any version should be appropriate. So, feel free to download the latest Project Zero build or the latest IBM WebSphere sMash Developer Edition. Before we do that, though, let's prepare our Java development environment.

First Things First: Java Development Environment

Prior to installing the sMash CLI, you must ensure that you have a functional Java SE Development Kit (JDK™) version 5 or 6 installed. It is important to remember that you cannot use the Java SE Runtime Environment (JRE™) to develop with sMash. The AppBuilder development environment requires libraries found only in the JDK and not in the JRE. This is a common problem with first-time users. You may choose to use either the JDK from Sun or IBM. They can be found in the locations in Listing 1.1.

Listing 1.1. Locations of Supported JDKs

After you have downloaded a JDK, install it per the instructions provided for your operating system. The following steps show the configuration using the Linux® command line. For Windows® users, you need to open a command prompt and alter the statements appropriately. When installed, you can verify your JDK installation by running the commands in either Listing 1.2 or Listing 1.3.

The output shown in the listings indicates that I am running the IBM JDK version 1.6.0 on a Linux x86 platform. If running the Sun JDK, a similar output will be shown. The important thing is that you get JDK version information back and not some random error. Now that we have the JDK installed and have ensured that it is working, we can move on to downloading and installing WebSphere sMash.